Artist Bio

Exhibition Statement

These images contribute to a rich history of landscape photography, which range from romantic images of primordial wilderness to urgent pictures of industrial wastelands. I recognize that humans and our traces are as much a part of the landscape as rocks and trees.

Landscapes are the results of human impact, sometimes through physical interventions in the land such as sowing a field of wheat or cutting down a forest to make way for housing developments. Other times landscapes are defined through the subjective ways of visually representing land. By choosing what scenes are worth photographing, and how those scenes are framed, artists shape our perception of the world. It is through images that we can ‘experience’ places and spaces from across the globe that we are unable to physically be present in, and indeed places outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

To convey the indescribable qualia of a place, I construct surreal landscapes, which both depict human traces on the land and capture the raw beauty of nature. The contrast of reality and fantasy forces viewers to consider their own actions and guides them to a deeper respect for our natural world. I captured the images on Oahu and the Big Island of Hawaii. I rethink traditional notions of landscape by photographing in a place that many would consider paradise, but I point my camera towards alternative views without cropping out the human traces.